My Process for Designing T-shirts

I got asked to do a t-shirt for two teams at Coveo, a Canadian tech company : the Connectors team and the Connectors Infrastructure team. The teams already had their emblem animal : an octopus (Kraken). These two teams are responsible for creating connections with each of the systems chosen by their customers to collect data and bring them back to Coveo to allow easy access via an intelligent search engine. They are therefore like little octopuses with many arms that collect information everywhere.I started the project by doing some quick sketches to try some ideas. I usually do my first sketches in a Moleskine sketchbook (because I like their paper) with a red Prismacolor Col-Erase (so I can easily erase the lines if I need to).

Then, also in my sketchbook, I made two other more final drawings from the ideas that I gathered in my first sketches. I started with my red pencil and then I inked with my Micron pen. I often skip the inking step when it is for a personal project, but I wanted to give a better overview of the design to my contact without having to vectorize the drawing, because it takes more time to do.

For vectoring, I started with the version of the Connectors team (the one with the bandana) because it was easier to do. They asked me for a design that looks good on a dark t-shirt and they also wanted to use the colors of the Coveo logo: orange and blue.

The first version I made was the orange version (with the blue bandana). My goal was for the octopus to look like a small fire, but ultimately it was also important for them to keep the triangle orange. So I quickly made three blue versions with different colors for the bandana.

Then, when the octopus style was approved, I made two versions of the Connectors Infrastructure team (with the security helmet). I tried to put it in yellow (the traditional color for these helmets here in Quebec), but I also made an orange version in order to reduce the number of colors used in the design.

Finally, they chose to use the white and black bandana (the team members had different preferences) and the orange safety helmet. I made a few final adjustments and added a bit of brightness as suggested by the place where I print.